This Homeless Teen Biked 6 Hours to Get to College, and Now His Entire Town is Helping Him

Fred Barley, a 19-year-old college student in Georgia, dreams of going to medical school one day, and he'll do just about anything to make it happen — including riding his little brother's bike for six hours to get to his college campus.

According to reports from WSB-TV Atlanta, Barley is homeless, and biking to the Gordon State College campus in Barnesville, Georgia, was what he needed to do to register for his second semester of college classes. Determined, the teen made the trek through the summer heat with two duffel bags, which held everything he owned, and two gallon-size bottles of water in tow. After arriving in Barnesville, Barley set up camp (literally — he planned on sleeping in a tent on campus until the school's dorms opened again in August) and began looking for jobs in town, with nothing more than a box of cereal to eat.

Police officers soon discovered him hiding out in the bushes and ordered him to come out with his hands up. They quickly realized something was unusual about Barley's situation, however, and they sat down to talk with him about it. Moved by his story, the officers offered to pay for him to stay at a local motel for two nights.

Since then, in a touching turn of events, the entire town of Barnesville has come out to help the ambitious biology major. Local Casey Blaney started a GoFundMe page called Success for Fred, which has raised more than $47,000 for the teen in two days. The owner of a local pizza shop offered him a job as a dishwasher, and the community has come together to donate clothes, school supplies, a new bike and dental and medical support to help ensure Barley's success.

At a time when hate and violence is flooding our news feeds, it's heartwarming and inspiring to see an entire community come together to help out someone in need. And for Barley, it really is more about the people and the love he's received than it is about the material gifts.

"Some of the gifts aren't as important as the friends I've made," Barley told WSB-TV Atlanta. "More important than everything — the clothes, the shoes — the relationships mean so much more to me."

Watch Barley's "thank you" message to the community, which was posted to Facebook by his girlfriend, below.